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Monarch Butterfly on Mexican Sunflower
Monarch Butterfly on Mexican Sunflower

This year I planted a pack of “mystery wildflowers” in the hope of attracting and helping honeybees. I don’t recall seeing any honeybees, but the Mexican Sunflowers have attracted a lot of butterflies, such as this Monarch butterfly, as well as a Painted Lady that you can see in some other photos.

Surprisingly, the butterflies didn’t object much to my presence. I may have made them a bit nervous at first, as they fluttered away briefly, but they returned to searching out nectar in the flowers. I took the first few photos from a short distance, but as time grew on and they kept fluttering from flower to flower I stepped closer and was able to take some very nice shots (in my opinion).

An insects’s form of life is very different from that of a mammal’s, bird’s, reptile’s, amphibian’s, fish’s, or even another arthropod’s. The life cycle consists of several stages; in each one, the insect’s form is drastically different, and with some species (like the butterfly) the new stage eats its way out of the old stage’s body.

Insects are both prey and predator. Humans fear and loathe many of them — think of the wasp, the cockroach, or even the moth — and love them, as with the butterflies. Sometimes we both fear and love them, as with the much-maligned honeybee.

Some public policy experts have suggested that we can address the human need for protein in a manner friendlier to the environment by farming and eating insects instead of cows. The idea isn’t as outlandish as I thought when I first heard that poor countries might start adding crushed crickets to flour; after all, we have eaten (and drunk!) bees’ honey for millennia, and derive a food coloring from cochineal. Some countries have long eaten various insects, and when I was young I remember hearing of chocolate-covered ants.

It’s unlikely this butterfly has to worry about ending up on a dinner plate, though; monarchs are poisonous. Some bird species have adapted mechanisms that make monarchs palatable to them, but even so, they sometimes have to go on a Monarch diet precisely because of the toxin. No, the Monarch probably has to worry more about interstate highways and the vanishing fields of wildflowers.

(Assuming the Monarch worries at all.)

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Taken on: October 23, 2021
Tags: Everybody's photos tagged with monarch monarch Everybody's photos tagged with butterfly butterfly Everybody's photos tagged with mexican mexican more » Everybody's photos tagged with sunflower sunflower « less
Sets appears in:   • Non-disgusting insects    • Flowers    more » • Hattiesburg    « less
Groups appears in:   • It's My Mississippi    • Hattiesburg, Mississippi    more » • The Hub City (Hattiesburg, Mississippi)    • helios-gallery    • Russian lenses and cameras    • FUJIFILM X-Pro    • Fujifilm X-Pro1 Series    • Helios_    « less
Camera: Fujifilm X-Pro1, f/undef, 1/4000 sec, 58mm (=87mm), ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)
Camera: Fujifilm X-Pro1
Aperture: f/undef
Exposure Time: 1/4000 sec
Focal Length: 58mm (35mm equivalent: 87mm)
ISO: 200
Exposure Bias: -0.67 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program: Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode: Auto
Metering Mode: Average
White Balance: Auto
Sharpness: Hard
Color Space: sRGB
Software: GIMP 2.10.24
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Monarch Butterfly on Mexican Sunflower

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